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It turns out that digital photo frames are more susceptible than ever to viruses. If you bought or received a Mercury 1.5-inch keychain from Walmart or other retail stores, you could be at risk. Amazon emailed a warning to owners about Samsung’s SPF-85H 8-inch frame which was infected as well on its installation disc. Last year, the trojan Mocmex was found in some items from retailers like Best Buy, Costco and Target. If you are worried that you may have one, contact the store your frame came from or the manufacturer.

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Keep your eye out for phony Hallmark greeting cards sent to e-mails as they seem to be on the rise again. If the notice says you have to load a .zip file, you know you have a problem. The Trojan .zip releases a postcard.exe and a run key to Windows. When you restart your PC that key releases evilness upon you and the program adds you to an IRC botnet, accesses your contact list, and sends out even more attack e-mails. While we realize this is nothing new, we thought we would warn you on the chance that you believed someone actually remembered your birthday.

USC’s Information Sciences Institute really needs to get a life. Beginning in 2003, the researchers began collecting data. They eventually created a map of the Internet. Their ISI computers searched about 2.8 billion IPs and received about 187 million answers. They then used one dot per addy and came up with a diagram of 9 x 9 feet, the brighter images showing the area of the greater number of computers.

John Heidemann, head of the project, says that the map is actually only a portion of what is out there since some computers may have been shut off or behind a firewall, but hopes it will help researchers study the spread of viruses. A 24 x 36-inch version of the map (with about 65,000 addresses squeezed into one dot) will become available, so contact ant@isi.edu if you would like to get a copy.

Google Blogger, beware! Fake entries containing links to downloads can infect your Windows run PC. Computers that catch the virus are checked for saleable data or used as carriers. The links began in January by hackers dubbed “Storm Trojans” and may actually been have set up for allowing others to view e-mail entries on their Blogger Journals. Here are some of the storm worm subject lines:

are you kidding me? lol

Dude dont send that stuff to my home email…

Dude your gonna get caught, lol

HAHAHAHAHAHA, man your insane!

I cant belive you did this

LMAO, your crazy man

LOL, dude what are you doing

man, who filmed this thing?

oh man your nutz

OMG, what are you thinking

Some of the messages feature links to YouTube while others claim to be offering testing software or digital greeting cards. The group has reportedly infected over a million PCs in that time. We suggest it might be time to get a Mac, run Firefox, or find another outlet for your blogging.

The New York Times has a story about a group of researchers who examined the outbreak of the in-game disease ‘corrupted blood,’ originally designed to affect only high-level World of Warcraft characters, for clues about what the social response might be to an actual pandemic. The game provided the authors of a research paper set to be published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal a unique set of conditions for this research that had typically been difficult to simulate: A wide population, an emotional response (because WoW players get really attached to their characters) and the ability to disseminate information among the population.

The corrupted blood outbreak was a glitch in WoW that took place in September 2005 and provided a unique look at the responses both by the population and the “bug:”

As the virus spread, very real challenges emerged, such as the failure of quarantine measures, further transmission by character’s pets and the existence of “immune” characters, who act as carriers, passing the virus to others while failing to succumb to symptoms.

New company SpiralFrog has just signed an agreement with UMG (Universal Music Group) to include them in their catalogue. SpiralFrog’s service is a no-cost alternative on the net that allows users to legally download music. Included in this service are quick-loading legal digital files with no worry of spyware or viruses.

Robin Kent, SpiralFrog’s CEO claims, “SpiralFrog will offer those (young) consumers a better experience and environment than they can get from any pirate site.”

How can they do this? SpiralFrog is ad-supported and you have to log in to their service at least once a month, or your music files cease and desist. Scheduled for a December beta launch, the company is currently talking to other major record labels for inclusion. Their target audience is the 16-34 crowd, but that’s good news for all of us former Napsterites. We really dig the logo, too.